I am a dealer, specialising in Russian Area Philately. You can contact me at
patemantrevor@gmail.com
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Sunday, 24 September 2017

St Petersburg and
Moscow police departments began using adhesive stamps to record payment of
residence permit fees in the 1860s. Most St Petersburg stamps are common, though
one is a great rarity, but Moscow’s are not common even though they remained in
use until at least 1881 when new stamps prepared by the State Printing Works were
issued.

Nothing about the first
Moscow issue suggests it was printed by those State works. The gum, the
variable paper, the wide variation in colour, the deterioration of the printing
plate, the lack of alignment of individual stamp clichés – all this is well
below the standard achieved by the State works. The stamps look like a job
which might have been done in-house by the Police department itself. To me, the
stamps look as if printed by lithography, the plates retained over a long
period and the quality of the print greatly deteriorating.

It is quite difficult
to study the issue for four reasons. First, the scarcity of large mint
multiples for plating purposes. Second, the impossibility of dating the use of
stamps which have been taken off document, where they were always cancelled by
a simple pen cross. Third, and connectedly, the difficulty in distinguishing
printings when there appears to be wide variation within printings and not just between them. Fourth, the scarcity of
stamps used even on a fragment of a document. In addition, lacking access to
the relevant sources I do not know what the fee structure was or how it
changed.

On the pages
illustrated below I have assembled over 100 Moscow stamps now in my possession.
About half of them have pencil notes on the reverse which indicate that they
are from Agathon Faberge’s collection. These notes are dated between 1900 and
1907, though some notes do not give a date. It is my belief that Faberge
annotated stamps that he bought individually but that, in addition, he bought
bundleware or kiloware of these stamps for research purposes and only annotated
those where he noticed something unusual. My guess is that in the 1900 – 1914 period
Faberge owned and studied many hundreds of these stamps, now dispersed across
many collections.

My assembly does not
include two varieties listed in the John Barefoot catalogue: an error of colour
on the 5 kopeck printed in blue instead of the correct green; and a perforated
version of the 5 kopeck green. I have never seen either and would be pleased to
illustrate them here if anyone has either of them. Added: John McMahon has kindly provided the following scan of his error of colour stamp. This appears to be the only recorded copy,from the Marcovitch collection. However, to my eye, the blue would be more convincing if it could be matched to the same blue appearing on a 3 kop stamp (the 3 kop stamps were printed in blue).

I can show two varieties
identified by A Faberge: bisects on the 2 kopek and manuscript revaluation of
a 2 kopek stamp to 3 kopeks.

On my very provisional
pages, I have copied back-of-stamp A Faberge’s notes and written them
underneath the stamps on which they are found. Any notes above the stamps are
mine. Click on Images to Magnify.